1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a laryngoscope. More particularly, the Present invention relates to a laryngoscope with a movable image-capturing unit.
2. Description of the Related Art
Endotracheal intubation is critical for maintaining the breathing function of a patient under general anaesthesia. In most cases, to prevent the occurrence of hypoxia, anaesthetists have to complete the intubation by inserting an endotracheal tube into a patient's trachea in a very short period of time to provide oxygen thereinto promptly. Therefore, it is extremely important for anaesthetists to perform the intubation efficiently.
To intubate quickly, most anaesthetists take advantage of a laryngoscope to observe the condition of a patient's upper airway. Please refer to FIG. 1. An early laryngoscope 10P mainly consists of a handgrip 20 and a blade 30. It is generally used on a patient lying face up with the mouth open. The anaesthetists may press the tongue base down with the blade 30 by holding the handgrip 20 to move away the epiglottis cartilage and to gain a clearer view of the trachea to complete the intubation procedure correctly. However, there is great variation among patients' anatomies, and there are many cases in which the early laryngoscope 10P cannot be used satisfactorily.
To overcome this shortcoming, different solutions have been provided by several improved laryngoscope designs. For example, some laryngoscopes have different pushing mechanisms installed on blades to improve the visual field, such as those disclosed in US2005/0234303A1. Some other laryngoscopes have a stationary image-capturing unit, as the element 40P shown in FIG. 1, in order to facilitate observation of the trachea. However, said improvements are still unable to fully address users' needs. First, the pushing mechanism used in the former improvement may inevitably hurt the upper airway of a patient. Concerning the latter improvement, the view of the image-capturing unit 40P, shown in FIG. 2, can become obstructed by the patient's tissues or organs, such as the epiglottis cartilage 100, or by the endotracheal tube, since the image-capturing unit 40P is fixed on the blade 30 with a fixed length and curvature. Therefore, this kind of improvement still fails to provide a viewing mechanism adjustable to different patients, and, in some cases, users are unable to observe the trachea during the intubation.
Thus, there is a need for a laryngoscope suitable for different anatomies to make intubation and the observation of the upper airways more convenient.